I presume fictional characters count.

Apparently, my Geordie father and Welsh mother had quite a tussle over my names before I was born. They agreed on what the names were to be, but not which way round. My mother, who had been deeply affected by the book "How green was my Valley", won the coin toss. Thus, my first name is Huw, after Huw Morgan, the central character of the book. My father gave me the middle name "Lindsay" (his own first name and that of my paternal grandfather) as a consolation prize.

(My mother also won the battle over the name of the family dog, a retriever bitch who became "Bronwen", or "Bron" for short.)

I don't think either had quite foreseen the future course of events. At the age of five, I found myself in the middle of Yorkshire with a set of forenames which infant school teachers insisted were a combination of a misspelling and an impossibility as it was a girl's name. (These were the same narrow-minded conformists who insisted that Kishor Solanki put down his Christian names on various forms.)

I suspect that my mother's insistence gave me my predominantly Welsh outlook and accent. When I was briefly engaged in my late twenties, my Welsh fiancee and I discussed what names we were to give any fruit of our union. We decided that we would take great pleasure in giving them names unpronounceable by English schoolmarms, both the traditionalist and PC variety. The first arrival would be "Dafydd" if a boy and "Meillin" if a girl.

Oddly, in spite of everyone's insistence that "Hugh" is the correct spelling, I have not met one single "Hugh" in my lifetime, though about twenty "Huws". (To be fair, I went to University in Wales, and spend much time with my mother's relations in Wales; but nevertheless, the correct spelling from that sample is the Welsh version, nem. con.)

As for my middle name, would anyone care to tell the Earl of Crawford that he is a girl ? Apparently, "Lindsay" is, or was, quite popular as a boy's name in Geordieland (the counties of Northumberland and Durham), as well as in parts of Scotland.

I refuse to give my last name here. That's too embarassing.